This invention relates to an automatic bread maker in which bread can be automatically made merely by charging ingredients including flour, yeast and water into a bread vessel, and besides a steaming function is added so as to easily make bagels.
There is already known a bread maker in which a desired menu course is selected from a plurality of bread-making menu courses, and required ingredients are put into a bread vessel, and merely by doing so, a bread-making process, comprising a kneading step of kneading the ingredients, a fermentation step of fermenting dough, a degassing step of deflating the expanded dough, a shaping-fermentation step of expanding the dough into a shape of the bread, and a baking step of baking the expanded dough, is performed in a sequential manner, thereby automatically making the bread. In a device of this kind, in addition to a menu for effecting the entire process including a bread-baking step, a dough-making menu for effecting a process from a kneading step to a primary fermentation step is set, so that bagels and pizza can be prepared.
However, such a bread maker does not have the function of baking bagels. Generally, when making bagel bread, dough is kneaded, and is fermented, and after the fermentation, the dough is divided into sections or pieces, and these are formed into a doughnut-shape, and these are again fermented, and then are boiled in hot water of about 90.degree. C., and then are baked. A feature of this bread is that the dough is boiled in hot water for 30 seconds to 1 minute before the dough is baked. This is effected so as (1) to instantaneously suppress the fermentation and expansion of the dough, (2) to gelatinize starch in the dough and (3) to gelatinize the surface of the dough, and as a result the texture and a fresh baking color, which are inherent to the bagel bread, are obtained.
Namely, in the conventional bread maker, the dough pieces each formed into a doughnut-shape can not be arranged within an oven chamber, and the dough, after boiled, can not be baked. Therefore, it has been proposed to provide the bread maker with the function of boiling the bagel dough, the function of taking out the boiled dough and the function of baking this dough. However, there is a problem that such a device is increased in size, and has an increased number of component parts, and therefore is costly.
From results of tests conducted by Applicant of the present application, it has been found that the boiling of the bagel dough can be replaced by steaming. When the steamed dough was baked, the bagel bread, having almost the same texture and the same baking color as obtained with the boiling, could be obtained.